{
  "id": "snowball-effect.stacked-dependency",
  "term": "snowball effect",
  "sense": "stacked-dependency",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 19,
  "arena": "social, physical, systemic",
  "domain": "emergent phenomena",
  "style": "folk",
  "definition": "A change that grows because each next step depends on the size achieved by the previous, until the weight of prior accumulation drives further accumulation without need for new cause.",
  "folk_gloss": "When a small thing grows bigger by picking up more of the same as it goes.",
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "drift.aimless",
      "dependence.condition",
      "growth.development",
      "momentum.retained",
      "threshold.boundary"
    ],
    "interaction": "stacked dependency",
    "novel_properties": [
      "self-amplifying feedback",
      "autonomous escalation"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2008 financial crisis accelerated as mortgage defaults raised credit insurance costs, triggering more defaults.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "Avalanches grow rapidly when falling snow increases speed, entraining more snowpack from the mountainside.",
      "domain": "physics"
    },
    {
      "text": "Wikipedia's first 10,000 articles took months; the next 100,000 came faster as editors attracted more editors.",
      "domain": "computing"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "snowball effect"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "phrases:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.7,
    "sources": [
      "folk phrase — stacked dependency"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-snowball-effect.stacked-dependency"
}